Horace couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear the man who had got burned screaming. He couldn’t hear the fire, though it still swirled upward unabated, as though it were living upon itself, and soundless: a voice of fury like in a dream, roaring silently out of a peaceful void.
30
The trains at Kinston were met by an old man who drove a seven passenger car. He was thin, with gray eyes and a gray moustache with waxed ends. In the old days, before the town boomed suddenly into a lumber town, he was a planter, a landholder, son of one of the first settlers. He lost his property through greed and gullibility, and he began to drive a hack back and forth between town and the trains, with his waxed moustache, in a top hat and a worn Prince Albert coat, telling the drummers how he used to lead Kinston society; now he drove it.
After the horse era passed, he bought a car, still meeting the trains. He still wore his waxed moustache, though the top hat was replaced by a cap, the frock coat by a suit of gray striped with red made by Jews in the New York tenement district. “Here you are,” he said, when Horace descended from the train. “Put your bag into the car,” he said. He got in himself. Horace got into the front seat beside him. “You are one train late,” he said.
“Late?” Horace said.
“She got in this morning. I took her home. Your wife.”
“Oh,” Horace said. “She’s home?”
The other started the car and backed and turned. It was a good, powerful car, moving easily. “When did you expect her?.……” They went on. “I see where they burned that fellow over at Jefferson. I guess you saw it.”
“Yes,” Horace said. “Yes. I heard about it.”
“Served him right,” the driver said. “We got to protect our girls. Might need them ourselves.”
They turned, following a street. There was a corner, beneath an arc light. “I’ll get out here,” Horace said.
“I’ll take you on to the door,” the driver said.
“I’ll get out here,” Horace said. “Save you having to turn.”
“Suit yourself,” the driver said. “You’re paying for it, anyway.”
Horace got out and lifted out his suit case; the driver did not offer to touch it. The car went on. Horace picked up the suit case, the one which had stayed in the closet at his sister’s home for ten years and which he had brought into town with him on the morning when she had asked him the name of the District Attorney.
His house was new, on a fairish piece of lawn, the trees, the poplars and maples which he had set out, still new. Before he reached the house, he saw the rose colored shade at his wife’s windows. He entered the house from the back and came to her door and looked into the room. She was reading in bed, a broad magazine with a colored back. The lamp had a rose colored shade. On the table sat an open box of chocolates.
“I came back,” Horace said.
She looked at him across the magazine.
“Did you lock the back door?” she said.
“Yes, I knew she would be,” Horace said. “Have you tonight.……”
“Have I what?”
“Little Belle. Did you telephone.……”
“What for? She’s at that house party. Why shouldn’t she be? Why should she have to disrupt her plans, refuse an invitation?”
“Yes,” Horace said. “I knew she would be. Did you.……”
“I talked to her night before last. Go lock the back door.”
“Yes,” Horace said. “She’s all right. Of course she is. I’ll just.……” The telephone sat on a table in the dark hall. The number was on a rural line; it took some time. Horace sat beside the telephone. He had left the door at the end of the hall open. Through it the light airs of the summer night drew, vague, disturbing. “Night is hard on old people,” he said quietly, holding the receiver. “Summer nights are hard on them. Something should be done about it. A law.”
From her room Belle called his name, in the voice of a reclining person. “I called her night before last. Why must you bother her?”
“I know,” Horace said. “I wont be long at it.”
He held the receiver, looking at the door through which the vague, troubling wind came. He began to say something out of a book he had read: “Less oft is peace. Less oft is peace,” he said.
The wire answered. “Hello! Hello! Belle?” Horace said.
“Yes?” her voice came back thin and faint. “What is it? Is anything wrong?”
“No, no,” Horace said. “I just wanted to tell you hello and good-night.”
“Tell what? What is it? Who is speaking?” Horace held the receiver, sitting in the dark hall.
“It’s me, Horace. Horace. I just wanted to—”
Over the thin wire there came a scuffling sound; he could hear Little Belle breathe. Then a voice said, a masculine voice: “Hello, Horace; I want you to meet a—”
“Hush!” Little Belle’s voice said, thin and faint; again Horace heard them scuffling; a breathless interval. “Stop it!” Little Belle’s voice said. “It’s Horace! I live with him!” Horace held the receiver to his ear. Little Belle’s voice was breathless, controlled, cool, discreet, detached. “Hello. Horace. Is Mamma all right?”
“Yes. We’re all right. I just wanted to tell you.……”
“Oh. Good-night.”
“Good-night. Are you having a good time?”
“Yes. Yes. I’ll write tomorrow. Didn’t Mamma get my letter today?”
“I dont know. I just—”
“Maybe I forgot to mail it. I wont forget tomorrow, though. I’ll write tomorrow. Was that all you wanted?”
“Yes. Just wanted to tell you.……”
He put the receiver back; he heard the wire die. The light from his wife’s room fell across the hall. “Lock the back door,” she said.
31
While on his way to Pensacola to visit his mother, Popeye was arrested in Birmingham for the murder of a policeman in a small Alabama town on June 17 of that year. He was arrested in August. It was on the night of June 17 that Temple had passed him sitting in the parked car beside the road house on the night when Red had been killed.
Each summer Popeye went to see his mother. She thought he was a night clerk in a Memphis hotel.
His mother was the daughter of a boarding house keeper. His father had been a professional strike breaker hired by the street railway company to break a strike in 1900. His mother at that time was working in a department store downtown. For three nights she rode home on the car beside the motorman’s seat on which Popeye’s father rode. One night the strike breaker got off at her corner with her and walked to her home.
“Wont you get fired?” she said.
“By who?” the strike breaker said. They walked along together. He was well-dressed. “Them others would take me that quick. They know it, too.”
“Who would take you?”
“The strikers. I dont care a damn who is running the car, see. I’ll ride with one as soon as another. Sooner, if I could make this route every night at this time.”
She walked beside him. “You dont mean that,” she said.
“Sure I do.” He took her arm.
“I guess you’d just as soon be married to one as another, the same way.”
“Who told you that?” he said. “Have them bastards been talking about me?”
A month later she told him that they would have to be married.
“How do you mean, have to?” he said.
“I dont dare to tell them. I would have to go away. I dont dare.”
“Well, dont get upset. I’d just as lief. I have to pass here every night anyway.”
They were married. He would pass the corner at night. He would ring the foot-bell. Sometimes he would come home. He would give her money. Her mother liked him; he would come roaring into the house at dinner time on Sunday, calling the other clients, even the old ones, by their first names. Then one day he didn’t come back; he didn’t ring the foot-bell when the trolley passed. The strike was over by then. She had a Christmas card from him; a picture, with a bell and an embossed wreath in gilt, from a Georgia town. It said: “The boys trying to fix it up here. But these folks awful slow. Will maybe move on until we strike a good town ha ha.” The word, strike, was underscored.